Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays are a new generation of displays. An organic thin film is formed on an OLED substrate, the organic thin film is sandwiched between a cathode and an anode metal or conductive layer, the cathode and anode electrode are applied a voltage, and thus the organic film irradiates light. Compared with liquid crystal displays, OLED displays have advantages such as being self-luminous, having fast response times, wide viewing angles, saturated colors, and many other advantages.
Oxygen and moisture in the air cause active metal of the cathode of OLED devices to be oxidized, and cause chemical reactions with organic materials, resulting in OLED devices malfunctioning. Therefore, effective encapsulation of OLED devices makes the OLED devices fully isolated from moisture and oxygen, thus being critical for extending life of OLED devices.
Currently, major methods of OLED encapsulation are desiccant piece and UV glue, face seal, frit (glass frit) encapsulation, and thin-film encapsulation. Because frit encapsulation has a good effective encapsulation, and the encapsulating methods are flexible and convenient, the method can be flexibly used in different sizes of products. Therefore, frit encapsulation is a very developed encapsulating method.
As shown in FIG. 3, in order to ensure that a frit 302 is completely cured, irradiation width of the laser beam 303 needs to be wider than width of the frit 302, while a portion of laser beam wider than the frit 302 may irradiate through a encapsulation cover plate and to an electrode 301 of an OLED substrate, it is easy to make the electrode 301 on the substrate to fuse, thus the electrode 301 may short so as to make the OLED devices malfunction.
In order to avoid this situation, conventional art adds a mask unit in a machine, and after an alignment system processing, an opaque region of the mask blocks excess light of the laser beam, thereby the laser only irradiates on the frit, thus protecting the electrodes on the OLED substrate. However, this kind of method also has problems. First, the machine needs a precise alignment system support, the apparatus is expensive, and also prone to mal-position. Second, the laser shielded by the opaque region of the mask may reflect to the laser head, resulting in burn damage to the laser head.
In view of the above, the manufacturing methods of OLED display panels in the conventional art, in order to ensure the glass frit is completely cured, the irradiation width of the laser beam needs to be wider than a width of the glass frit, while a portion of laser beam wider than the frit may irradiate through a encapsulation cover plate and to an electrode of an OLED substrate, it is easy to make the electrode on the substrate to fuse, so as to make the OLED devices malfunction.